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[ID] => 9489
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[post_date] => 2011-03-09 17:55:24
[post_date_gmt] => 2011-03-09 16:55:24
[post_content] => By: Gayle Allard
The news last week that housing sales jumped in the final quarter of 2010 in Spain appears, at first blush, to be a sign that a deeply depressed market may be turning around. But looking beyond the surface, what seems more likely is that plenty of bad news still awaits.
Housing sales were up more than 14% in the last three months of 2010, according to the Ministerio de Fomento, after three years of steady decline. The increase lifted housing sales by almost 6% for the year as a whole.
However, looking beneath the surface, it still appears that Spain´s housing market has substantial room to decline before it begins to recover. At the end of 2010, the tax deduction for interest paid on mortgages for the main residence was eliminated, which gave an artificial but temporary boost to sales.
The underlying reality has three facets:
1) Spain is one of the developed countries that suffered the largest housing bubble. The housing price-to-income ratio for Spain rose from just under 100% in 2001 to almost 167% in 2006, on the eve of the crisis, according to the OECD. This was the largest increase registered in any developed country except New Zealand. The price-to-income ratio also rose more than anywhere else except New Zealand over the same period, from 105% to 156%.
2) Despite the crisis and three years of near-stagnant sales, prices in Spain have fallen very little, compared to other countries with housing bubbles. At issue could be expectations or bank reluctance to release housing units onto the market for fear of showing even greater losses in asset value. The Economist warned recently that housing prices were probably still overvalued by about 40% in Spain.
3) There are still somewhere near a million vacant housing units around the country awaiting potential buyers. Many of them are in coastal or suburban areas, which makes them harder to sell at a time of near-recession and rising oil prices.
Combine these three dismal factors with still-rising unemployment, weak domestic demand and the prospects of higher euro-area interest rates in the short term, and it seems unlikely that the good news that Spain heard about its housing market a few days ago was anything more than a small upward blip on a downward sloping sales curve.
[post_title] => The Economist warned that housing prices were overvalued by about 40% in Spain
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[post_modified] => 2011-03-09 17:56:13
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By: Gayle Allard
The news last week that housing sales jumped in the final quarter of 2010 in Spain appears, at first blush, to be a sign that a deeply depressed market may be turning around. But looking beyond the surface, what seems more likely is that plenty of bad news still awaits.
Housing sales were up more than 14% in the last three months of 2010, according to the Ministerio de Fomento, after three years of steady decline. The increase lifted housing sales by almost 6% for the year as a whole.
However, looking beneath the surface, it still appears that Spain´s housing market has substantial room to decline before it begins to recover. At the end of 2010, the tax deduction for interest paid on mortgages for the main residence was eliminated, which gave an artificial but temporary boost to sales.
The underlying reality has three facets:
1) Spain is one of the developed countries that suffered the largest housing bubble. The housing price-to-income ratio for Spain rose from just under 100% in 2001 to almost 167% in 2006, on the eve of the crisis, according to the OECD. This was the largest increase registered in any developed country except New Zealand. The price-to-income ratio also rose more than anywhere else except New Zealand over the same period, from 105% to 156%.
2) Despite the crisis and three years of near-stagnant sales, prices in Spain have fallen very little, compared to other countries with housing bubbles. At issue could be expectations or bank reluctance to release housing units onto the market for fear of showing even greater losses in asset value. The Economist warned recently that housing prices were probably still overvalued by about 40% in Spain.
3) There are still somewhere near a million vacant housing units around the country awaiting potential buyers. Many of them are in coastal or suburban areas, which makes them harder to sell at a time of near-recession and rising oil prices. Seguir leyendo…
En este punto, querría recuperar un 
En el 2004 George W. Bush levantó todos los embargos de su país sobre Libia y el Departamento de Estado de la primera potencia del mundo les retiró la calificación de país que esponsoriza el terrorismo.
Desde Enero del 2008 y durante 2 años, Libia fue miembro del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas.
En 2009 Libia tenía embajador en Norteamérica – y a la inversa- por primera vez en 35 años. Ese mismo año fue muy polémico el traslado desde el Reino Unido del acusado del atentado de Lockerbie por motivos humanitarios (270 personas perecieron en el atentado. El acusado estuvo 8 años en prisión).
El 20 de Febrero del 2011 se tuvo conocimiento en los medios europeos que la situación previa de Túnez y Egipto se había extendido a Libia. La información no es clara pero la violencia mostrada en reducir a los insurgentes ha motivado que en dos semanas escasas hayan vuelto las sanciones económicas norteamericanas, y el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU haya votado a favor de llevar a Gaddafi y a otros oficiales a una corte criminal.
¿Tuvo que ver las ingentes reservas de Gas y Petróleo del país en la percepción que Occidente ha tenido sobre Libia en los últimos 10 años?
Se han producido situaciones realmente peculiares como el acuerdo del 30 de Agosto del 2008 firmado entre Italia y Libia en el que el primero pagaría al segundo 5 mil millones de euros como compensación al periodo colonial desde 1911 a 1943… y ahora La Corte Internacional.
¿No hemos aprendido nada en Occidente de Irak y de la forma de apoyar (los ochenta) y perseguir (los noventa) a Saddam Hussein? El antiguo Presidente de Irak lleva ajusticiado desde diciembre del 2006 pero la paz y la estabilidad no ha vuelto a su país en casi un lustro.
[post_title] => La percepción de Occidente sobre Gaddafi
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[post_modified] => 2023-12-13 13:55:37
[post_modified_gmt] => 2023-12-13 12:55:37
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Juan Ramón Cuadrado, Catedrático de Política Económica de la Universidad de Alcalá, en un comunicado enviado a través de 
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